In Memoriam 

Henry W. Johnstone, Jr. 

1920 - 2000 

Henry W. Johnstone, Jr., Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at The Pennsylvania 
State University, died this year just before turning eighty. 

Professor Johnstone arrived at Penn State as a member of the philosophy 
faculty in 1952, and he retired as a full professor in 1984. In the late 1970s, he 
began studying Classics at Penn State. In 1979, he earned his M.A. in Classics and 
in 1980, and 1982-83, he continued his studies in Bryn Mawr's doctoral program 
in Classics. During his time as a Philosophy Department faculty member and 
student of Classics, and throughout his retirement, Professor Johnstone was a 
leader in shaping an intellectual community between Philosophy and Speech Com-
munication at Penn State, and thus between those interested in philosophy, argu-
mentation, and rhetoric. His collaborations with other leaders such as Carroll Arnold, 
Robert Oliver, Donald Philip Verene, Thomas Olbricht, and Maurice Natanson 
resulted in groundbreaking considerations of the relevance of philosophy to argu-
ment and rhetoric, and vice versa. Professor Johnstone's work in these areas 
found its way into Classics too, as is evident in his critique of the argumentative 
structure and function of the rhetorical figure "pankoinon" in ancient Greek trag-
edy. 

Professor Johnstone's deeply intelligent and free spirited explorations of phi-
losophy, argument, and rhetoric surpass the significance of his remarkably prolific 
and sustained career, and the depth of his commitments to these topics of concern 
surpasses the significance of his explorations. Prior to Penn State, Professor 
Johnstone took his first academic position at Williams College in 1948. He arrived 
from the graduate philosophy program at Harvard committed to empiricism. At 
Williams, his philosophical outlook was confronted by the idealism of his col-
leagues, and later he found that his colleagues had argued him into idealism. As 
Professor Johnstone himself explains in Validity and Rhetoric in Philosophical 
Argument (1978), his reflections on the etiology of the profound change in his 
philosophical outlook motivated his theories of philosophy, argument, and rheto-
ric. His explorations of philosophy as argumentum ad hominem, his refutation of 
philosophical argumentation as formal, his expression of genuine argument as 
bilateral, and his formulation of rhetoric as a wedge mark his most significant 



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contributions to the study of argument as well as provide a kind of implicit docu-
mentation of the way changes in his own philosophical outlook occurred. 

In retirement, Professor Johnstone continued working in his university office, 
editing journals (both Philosophy and Rhetoric and The Journal of Speculative 
Philosophy), and bringing his own work to publication. Fifty of his works reached 
publication during his retirement, making a combined total of 179 publications 
throughout the course of his academic career. During his retirement, he also con-
tinued his collaborations with colleagues and students from Philosophy and Speech 
Communication. One such collaboration led to his directing a doctoral dissertation 
in Speech Communication that combined his interests in philosophy, rhetoric, ar-
gumentation, and Homeric culture (one of his favorite areas of study in Classics). 
Characteristic of this collaboration and his other collaborations with colleagues 
and students was the extended working lunch. All of us who went to lunch with 
Professor Johnstone know that this was an art form that he had perfected. It was 
an indulgence in friendship and the pursuit of ideas, punctuated by culinary indul-
gences generally including a properly chilled martini, a beautifully prepared main 
dish, and always dessert. Professor Johnstone continued to maintain an office and 
the full activities of his life as an emeritus professor until several months before his 
death. 

Professor Johnstone's academic career, intelligence, and deep commitments 
to the study of philosophy, argument, and rhetoric, as significant as they all are, 
cannot surpass the significance of the contribution he made to the lives of those 
who knew him. He became our model of excellence, our way of seeing the abun-
dance of grace with which one person could live. Those of us who had the grand 
opportunity to study with Henry Johnstone and to be his colleagues know that he 
lived the very theories he constructed. He argued ad hominem, with generosity 
and respect for the ideas of others, and toward the end of critical consciousness. 
His way of arguing was his way of being. And his way of being was a demonstra-
tion of both his love for ideas and the people with whom he pursued ideas. For 
those who did not know him, he left behind a wealth of writing to talk about at the 
table long after he had excused himself. 

Mari Lee lv/ij\'ud